Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts--Becoming the Person You Want to Be

by Marshall Goldsmith

ego depletion

we possess a limited conceptual resource called ego strength, which is depleted through the day by our various efforts at self-regulation—resisting temptations, making trade-offs, inhibiting our desires, controlling our thoughts and statements, adhering to other people’s rules. People in this state, said Baumeister, are ego depleted.

By the end of the day, we’re worn down and vulnerable to foolish choices.

Researchers call this decision fatigue, a state that leaves us with two courses of action: 1) we make careless choices or 2) we surrender to the status quo and do nothing. Decision fatigue is why the head-scratching purchases we make on Tuesday get returned on Wednesday; we’re more clearheaded the next day when we’re not depleted. It’s also why we put off decisions; we’re too drained to decide now.

Suppressing your opinions—or for that matter, engaging in any effort to control your emotions around others—is depleting.

Unlike being physically tired, however, we’re usually unaware of depletion.

Depletion, like stress, is an invisible enemy.

we don’t appreciate how it’s grinding us down, affecting our behavioral discipline—and exposing us to bad judgment and undesirable actions.

Doing things that deplete us is not the same as doing things when we’re depleted. The former is cause, the latter effect.

Under depletion’s influence we are more prone to inappropriate social interactions, such as talking too much, sharing intimate personal information, and being arrogant.

less likely to follow social norms; for example, we are more likely to cheat. We are less helpful. We can also be more aggressive; the effort of curbing our normal aggression depletes our self-control over that impulse. Conversely, we can also be more passive; when our intellectual resources are sapped, we are ...

our environment affects us in powerful, insidious, and mysterious ways. Depletion is one of those environmental hazards.

A day at the beach—no hassles, no worries except applying SPF 30—is probably low depletion. So is recreational hiking all day in the mountains, despite the physical demands. The many things we do by choice,

Biting our tongue when we hear the idiocies spouted by our brother-in-law or neighbor is high depletion.

Making big decisions late in the day is an obvious risk.

Structure is how we overcome depletion. In an almost magical way, structure slows down how fast our discipline and self-control disappear. When we have structure, we don’t have to make as many choices; we just follow the plan. And the net result is we’re not being depleted as quickly.

If we provide ourselves with enough structure, we don’t need discipline. The structure provides it for us. We can’t structure everything obviously—no environment is that cooperative—but all of us rely on structure in small ways some of the time.

We regard the pillbox as a convenience but on another level, it’s a structural surrogate for self-discipline. We don’t have to remember to take our pills. The pillbox does the remembering for us.

When we follow an unshakable wake-up routine, or write down an agenda for our meetings, or stop at the same coffee shop before work, or clear our messy desk before opening up the laptop to write, we’re surrendering to our routine, and burning up less energy trying to be disciplined. Our routine has taken care of that.

It’s an irresistible equation: the more structure I have, the less I have to worry about.

But when I consider the behavioral edge that structure provides, my only question is “Why would anyone say no to a little more structure?”

pretend that you are going to be tested at every meeting!

Why can’t we string one hour into another and then another so that self-testing for an entire day becomes our structure?

One other thing: when we decide to behave well and our first steps are successful, we often achieve a self-fulfilling momentum—Griffin called it “cruise control”—where we don’t have to try as hard to be good. Like getting through the first four days of a strict diet, if we can handle the initial stages of inhibiting our undesirable impulses, we’re less likely to backslide. We don’t want to waste the gains of our behavioral investment. Good behavior becomes the sunk cost we hate to sacrifice.

The simpler the structure, the more likely we’ll stick with it.

Successful people are generally good at anticipating environments where their best behavior is at risk.

Successful people aren’t wishy-washy about a course of action. Choosing Hourly Questions as a structure and articulating the specific questions is a commitment device—certainly better than hoping things will work out. It’s the difference between considering a goal and writing it down.

Hourly Questions, impinging on our consciousness with precise regularity, neutralize the ignorance and make us vibrantly aware. We don’t have time to forget our situation or get distracted from our objective—because the next test is coming in sixty minutes.

Scoring. Grading our performance adds reflection to mindfulness.

If we score poorly in one hourly segment, we get a chance to do better an hour later.

daily and weekly checkups are more than enough for a goal that rewards persistence and consistency. You answer your Daily Questions each night and gradually reap the benefit many months later. It’s not an overnight religious conversion. You’re playing a long game.

I am not an unconscious victim of my environment. Whatever I do, I’m indulging in a conscious choice, with eyes wide open.

We also know what marginal motivation looks like, although we’re less alert to it in ourselves. It’s all those moments when our enthusiasm for a task is dulled or compromised and we’re vulnerable to mediocrity.

Skill is the beating heart of high motivation. The more skill we have for the task at hand, the easier it is to do a good job. The easier to do a good job, the more we enjoy it. The more we enjoy it, the higher our motivation to continue doing it,

we often overlook the flip side—the situations when insufficient skill practically preordains our marginal motivation.

We also underestimate how the quality of our goals affects our motivation.

We fail at New Year’s resolutions because our goals are almost always about marginal stuff, which we pursue with marginal motivation.

we don’t appreciate how quickly our motivation can turn marginal at the first signs of progress. This is the invisible lure of good enough feeding upon itself.

glimpse of the finish line is a mirage.

We are professionals at what we do, amateurs at what we want to become. We need to erase this devious distinction—or at least close the gap between professional and amateur—to become the person we want to be. Being good over here does not excuse being not so good over there.

The first objective is awareness—being awake to what’s going on around us.

The second is engagement. We’re not only awake in our environment, we’re actively participating in it—and the people who matter to us recognize our engagement.